This invention relates to payments for online transactions and in particular to interactions between payment platforms and online service providers.
Users purchase services or products from online service providers and need to make payments for their purchases. Payments for online services can be made in various ways, for example, by credit card, bank transfer, or check. Payment by check may require physical transfer of check and manual processing. Online service providers prefer payment mechanisms that can be processed electronically without requiring any manual processing, for example, credit card payments.
Users are often concerned about the safety of their credit card information when they provide the information to online service providers. The safety concerns may be about how the online service provider stores the information or how the information is transmitted during communications with the online service providers. As a result, various vendors provide payment services that users are more likely to be more comfortable with. For example, a payment provider may obtain the credit card information or bank account information from the user and the online service providers interact with the payment provider to complete the payment for a transaction. As a result, the user provides the credit card or bank account information to only a few payment providers rather than to each online service provider.
There can be multiple payment providers in the market. Examples of payment providers currently available include PAYPAL, BOKU, PLAYSPAN, and ZONG. Therefore, different users may use different payment providers. As a result, if an online service provider does not support a payment provider, a potential customer that relies on that online service provider may not be able to complete a transaction with the online service provider. An online service provider may lose a customer unless the online service provider can interact with the payment provider for the customer. Therefore, online service providers need to interface with as many payment providers as possible to facilitate payments for as many potential customers as possible. Since each payment provider may have a different interface for interacting with the payment provider, online service providers are faced with the task of developing and maintaining multiple interfaces for different payment providers. This may require the online service provider to utilize significant resources for development and maintenance of software that can be complex, error prone, and constantly changing.